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Serving Customer Needs Earns NetApp the Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award for 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - June 25, 2012
- Today, in recognition of its work helping customers and
partners build private cloud solutions on the Microsoft®
platform, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) has won the 2012 Microsoft Private
Cloud Partner of the Year award. NetApp was honored among a global
field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in
innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on
Microsoft technology. The honor reinforces NetApp's long-standing
commitment to storage and storage management solutions for
Microsoft environments that enable organizations to reduce costs,
increase agility, improve efficiency, and utilize proven
platforms.

Awards were presented in multiple categories,
with winners chosen from a set of nearly 3,000 entrants worldwide.
NetApp was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and
services in Private Cloud Partner of the Year. NetApp was also
named a finalist in the Virtualization and Management award
category. Winners will be honored on stage at the Microsoft
Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto (July 8-12, 2012).

In response to corporate mandates to do more
with less, businesses are changing how they deliver and manage IT
services and applications with secure, on-demand private cloud
solutions. A recent IDC survey of 679 U.S. IT decision makers
indicates that approximately one-third (32%) already have some type
of private cloud implementation in production, although most are
limited to supporting specific user groups or applications at this
time. An additional 37% are in the early stages of implementation
and/or planning for a private cloud[1]. Recognizing the dramatic impact of this move on
IT, NetApp and its partners have been working with technology
leaders, such as Microsoft, to make the promise of cloud computing
a reality for business.

Storage Is Foundational: With storage as the
foundation of a private cloud, NetApp has worked with Microsoft to
deliver a solution that enables customers to move from
virtualization to a private cloud while reducing the cost of
delivering IT services and applications by 50% or more./li>

Customers Go further, faster: Customers can
enjoy the faster delivery of IT services and applications with the
combination of NetApp® storage and the Microsoft private
cloud, featuring Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft
System Center 2012.

Increased Agility: With NetApp for Microsoft
private cloud solutions, customers can respond faster to changing
business needs while enabling high application availability with an
agile IT infrastructure.

FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud: This
reference architecture, which was the first design to be validated
by Microsoft for the updated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track
program, with its consolidated guidance enables channel partners to
transition customers to the cloud more quickly and with reduced
risk.

Customers Build Private Cloud
Solutions on NetApp and Microsoft

ING DIRECT
In its award entry, NetApp highlighted recent work with ING DIRECT,
the world's largest direct bank. ING DIRECT is known for its
innovative online banking offerings; however, an antiquated
infrastructure for provisioning development and test environments
hindered ING DIRECT's ability to bring new products to market.
Despite a business goal of rapidly expanding service offerings,
provisioning could take over 12 weeks just to support creation of a
development environment.

"As a strategic priority, we needed to
deliver innovation faster, so we looked to NetApp and its partners
to help speed things up in a smart way," said Andrew Henderson,
CIO, ING DIRECT Australia. "With our Microsoft private cloud
solution built on FlexPod from NetApp and Cisco we reduced
environment provisioning from 12 weeks to 10 minutes, improving
developer productivity and business agility. Through the 'Bank in a
Box' private cloud solution, we're able to provide anyone in the
company with access to applications, services, configurations and
5.5 TB of data, with the assurances that they'll integrate
seamlessly with Microsoft standard technologies."

University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, selected NetApp for
its Microsoft private cloud, meeting the need to provide more
flexible services, rapid provisioning, better management tools, and
self-service capabilities. This solution, implemented in
cooperation with NetApp partner Alantex Corp., included an
assessment of the university's existing infrastructure, a
custom-designed private cloud roadmap, and advanced integration
with System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with
Hyper-V.

"We depend on NetApp and our Microsoft
private cloud to provide agile, reliable, and stable service to
other departments, students, and staff," said Greg Parks,
infrastructure architect, University of Waterloo. "The initiative
helped us reduce hardware costs and shortened our 'react' time
significantly, enabling us to focus on strategic activities for our
customers."

Supporting Quotes

Mike Schutz, General Manager, Windows Server and
Management, Microsoft
"Microsoft is pleased to recognize NetApp as the Private Cloud
Partner of the Year. Utilizing their comprehensive portfolio of
Microsoft private cloud solutions, NetApp aims to enable customers
to reduce provisioning time, increase productivity and improve
business agility."

Phil Brotherton, Vice President, Enterprise Software
Ecosystem, NetApp
"This recognition underscores the collaboration between NetApp, our
partners, and Microsoft in private cloud development. Together,
we're helping businesses build flexible and efficient private cloud
solutions that not only transition companies to a shared IT
infrastructure now, but position them well for the future as IT
becomes a catalyst for continued growth and agility."

About the Microsoft Private Cloud
Partner of the Year Award
The Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award recognizes the partner
that excelled in offering innovative private cloud solutions for
their customers based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft
System Center, and related products. The winner used the Microsoft
platform for private cloud computing (for dynamically pooling,
allocating, provisioning, and managing cloud resources) including,
but not limited to:

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that deliver outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business
breakthroughs. Our commitment to living our core values and
consistently being recognized as a great place to work around the
world are fundamental to our long-term growth and success, as well
as the success of our pathway partners and customers. Discover our
passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster
at www.netapp.com.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further,
faster, and FlexPod are trademarks or registered trademarks of
NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft
and Windows Server are registered trademarks and Hyper-V is a
trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other brands or products
are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders
and should be treated as such. Use of the word "partner" or
"partnership" does not imply a legal partnership between NetApp and
any other company.